


this is our home (let's build it up)

by cjr09



Category: Eldemore
Genre: Contest Entry, Multi, sorry griff ily, there is violence but it's not graphic so i'm not using the tag, this is the short story section but i HATE formatting in da so I just did it here rip, this was... not what I was goin for but it was fun so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 07:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11481177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjr09/pseuds/cjr09
Summary: There is blood in his partner's mouth that both is and is not his own.There is fire on the houses that they had built, the house that they lived in.Poe bares his teeth.





	this is our home (let's build it up)

There is blood in his mouth.

The sight reminds Poe of one of his earliest memories: on dry land, Matthias laughing with cherry pie dripping down his chin, declaring himself the king of all pies. It's where Poe's name had come from; laughter and good food and better humor. The memory fades quickly.

The wolfkin shakes himself off like Poe after a bath and splatters the ground with blood that both is and is not his own. Matthias's hulking, bestial form isn't new to Poe, but it's not a common occurrence. His partner detested violence as much as Poe himself did.

Everything is noise and fire and blood and rage but it is not chaos, at least not on their side. This is their home, their soil, their corner of the map they had carved out from themselves and built into something for everyone, for anyone. They may not be as many as the invaders, but they are family. They know this place.

Poe bares his teeth unconsciously, fur spiking as a growl rumbles from his throat, adding his voice to the growing battle cry from his family.

They had built this home. They will defend it with their lives.

 

* * *

 

Poe does not pretend to understand what, exactly, is happening, or why. He does not understand magic in the  _faintest_ and, even if he did, he could never understand why someone would attack this place. Instead, he runs, finds people trapped in burning houses, stands between those that have made themselves enemy and those that have made themselves family and bares his bloodied teeth and lends his voice to the battle cry of his family.

He could, perhaps, understand why someone would want to attack an individual- Poe is under no illusions, the vast majority of his family are infuriating at their _best-_ but he could never understand why someone would attack here.

They built this home.

Infuriating though they may be, his family was not  _bad._  

Poe skids to a halt in front of a snarling liger and their robed bond and bares his teeth painted in blood that both is and is not his own. His eyes are fixed to the flaming, howling, laughing, draconic being that is trying to burn brighter than the sun, burn their home and their ideals to the ground.

They sound hollow. Their laugh sounds like a cry.

Poe sends the liger limping back with a few light scratches down his flank to show for his effort; one of his family bursts through the flames, fury in her green eyes and blood on her metal claws and the Liger yowls as their bond perishes.

That sounds hollow, too. Like an empty house that hadn't been made into a home.

Poe keeps his eyes on the foolish, flaming, laughing, crying, draconic being that had laid siege to Leviathan's Reach.

Poe had helped build this home. He would defend it with his life.

If they had asked, this could have been their home, too.

 

* * *

 

 

There are casualties. There is blood on his teeth and his pelt and the ground they had tilled and the houses they had built.

The scent of death lies heavy in the air. They will have to dig graves, bury friend and foe alike. The sun shines down no less bright than it usually does and there is no contender on their shores. It is far from quiet but it feels hollow; they do not cry out in victory.

What isn't on fire is covered in ice. (Tetra, at least, has the decency to look sheepish about this before she promptly passes out from blood loss.) This is a victory but no one thinks it sweet.

They had built this home. Friends and family and enemy alike had died here.

They did not build this place as a graveyard. They did not build this place for battle or for peace.

Poe had built houses for himself and for his family and their friends and anyone who had asked.

The beach is scorched and black, twisted and lifeless. If they had asked.

Poe grabs a bucket handle in his bloodied teeth and carefully avoids the blood and ash on the sand. There is no use in 'what ifs' but he knows they will haunt them for a while. He sets about delivering water to put out the fires. Poe can build houses but they had never asked and so it would never become a home. He hopes they have found whatever peace they are looking for, that in death they had a home to go back to. 

He limps between the sea and the fires until Matthias comes to get him so that the survivors will as well.

 

* * *

 

 

There are more surviving people than there are surviving homes; what houses have survived have become makeshift hospitals. They have many survivors but all are wounded. They do not want to lose more in the aftermath.

(Tetra took a vicious stab to the side. Lyric's hand is broken from taking a fall badly. Aiolos twisted a wing nearly backwards, Caelum's leg took enough timber splinters to it that he can't put any weight on it at all. Nascha's mask burned from her face and Matthias's jaw was dislocated. There are others who took worse.)

"So," Tetra croaks, muffled, into Nascha's shoulder as she flops an arm over the Elvian's stomach to brush against Matthias's ears, the wolfkin leaning, exhausted, against the bedframe and sitting on the floor, Poe's head in his lap. "I've been trying to figure out how to tell you this for a while, but-"

"I swear to  _every Ancient_ if you crack a joke-" Nep starts, picking her head up from where she's slumped across a desk, hair sticking up in every direction to glare halfheartedly at their leader.

"-but I kinda wanted to remodel, and since everything's on fire still probably-"

A chorus of groans rises to her declaration, and not just because the painkillers are wearing off.

She laughs then whines as her injured side jostles with the movement. Poe sits himself up, crawling up Matthias's side to brush his nose against Tetra's slightly burned fingers.

She shifts to lightly scratch Poe between the ears.

"What d'you say?" She asks, mischief clear in her tired voice, "wanna build me a new home?"

Poe huffs against her fingers and Matthias coughs a laugh underneath his Jader's weight that echoes through the many inhabitants of the room, the fear and exhaustion present within them all not disipating but lessening, settling. They survived. This place is still theirs.

Poe can't build a house for someone who doesn't ask and this place was still theirs. They were still home.

"'m takin' that as a yes," she yawns, and Poe can hear the smile in her voice that never fails to lift her family's spirits.

"Let's build it up."

 

**Author's Note:**

> HEY that was fun and weird and not at all what I was trying to write BUT
> 
> This is for the short story section of a contest for [Domestic Jader Taupe Pointer!](http://grifforik.deviantart.com/art/Domestic-Jader-Taupe-Pointer-Contest-691350083) Or as I would/have named him here, Poe XP
> 
> MAN I MISSED WRITING I CAN'T WAIT TO DO MY OTHER THINGS FOR HIM TBH and i'm also gonna probs do chocolate bully as well because I have an idea for them, please save me
> 
> Hopin to get some good practice in even if I don't win either contest- these are a ton of fun omg
> 
> Hey! Like my stuff and wanna support me and what I do? [Buy me a coffee!](http://ko-fi.com/cjwrites) That'd be super cool of you.


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